Utility Gumbo

There’s a lot in this pot.  Probably something everyone can find to enjoy.

I’m serving it up tonight out of the back of the truck on the side of the road.  So it will be short on dialog, full on flavor.

Feel free to pick-around.  Just wash your hands first.

And yes..bring your own bowl because unless noted, it’s all free

RE: Windows Roux

• TinyApps.Org Blog : Computer hardware chart – Amazing find from TinyApps.  Great image detailing lots of different forms of connectors, ports, memory chips, CPU’s, etc.  Real work of love there.  Download and keep that image handy.
• Mark’s Blog : The Case of the Temporary Registry Profiles. – More advanced than usual investigation of a software-error message.  Great tutorial on advanced troubleshooting techniques.
• Debug 101: What does !analyze do? and Debug 101: What does !analyze do? – Ask the Performance Team blog continues its Debugging theme.
• Updates: Autoruns v9.52, VMMap v2.2, procdump v1.2, procmon v2.5 – Microsoft Sysinternals tools update notices.
• Updates: Autoruns v9.53, ProcDump v1.3, Process Monitor v2.6 – Microsoft Sysinternals tools update notices.
• Updates: Zoomit 4.0, procdump v1.2 – Microsoft Sysinternals tools update notices.   Whew! Got em all?
• PowerGUI 1.9 RTMs - Dmitry’s PowerBlog: PowerShell and beyond. Much updated version of a GUI manager for Windows PowerShell script building and management.
• Upgrading from Windows 7 RC to RTM… you had to try it didn’t you? – MarkWilson.IT – Me? I’m planning on just copying my data off to a USB drive, doing a clean install, then reinstalling as needed.  Though I will make an ImageX image of all my systems’ partitions.  That way if I miss anything I can just mound the WIM’s and extract the data as needed.  Clean installs are always the way to go in my book.
• WinFontsView: View samples of Windows fonts installed on your system. – New clever tool from NirSoft.  Very fast and handy.  I’ve personally been using the slick NexusFont tool but what Nir’s lacks in GUI polish it more than makes up in size and speed.
• Update: UserAssist Tool Version 2.4.3 and see also UserAssist -- Didier Stevens – “The UserAssist utility displays a table of programs executed on a Windows machine, complete with running count and last execution date and time. Windows Explorer maintains this information in the UserAssist registry entries. My program allows you to display and manipulate these entries.”  Keep it handy as it’s portable.
• LockHunter – A freeware utility that comes in both x32 and x64 bit flavors to delete stubborn locked files.  This version supports Win7.  Runs as application directly or from the Windows Shell integration.  For more locked file and process killers see grand stream dreams: I will kill thee a hundred and fifty ways ... post.
• Sunbelt Blog: The 40 Most Popular Tools for Your System Admin Bag.  Excellent list and great descriptions.  I’m saving this to go back and explore some more.  Many tools are (proudly) found on my USB sticks.  There are some that are new to me as well in this list.  Can’t wait to start checking them out.  One of these day’s I’m going to take up an off-line challenge and work with a fellow blogger to come up with a collection of our own as my Portable SysAdmin Tools list is still good, it is quite light to what I now carry around and needs significant updating
• What’s My Pass? » Tech Toolkit 2.0. – Amazing collection of sysadmin-worthy tools that are all USB portable in various forms.  Developer gets around the issue that others have run-afoul of in building such collections by using Ketarin to have the end-user (you) download all the tools directly from the developer’s own sites, rather than packaging them up himself.  Good stuff, but be aware, depending on your AV solution, many of the tools included (particularly those of Nir’s) may set off AV/AM alarms as hacktools or potentially unwanted programs (sigh).  Poor Nir.  Send him some love guys and gals.  I’d be lost without his brilliant tools and generosity in sharing with the community.
• Malware causes "Access is denied" error – TinyApps blog.  Nice and simple tip for dealing with malware that renders exe’s un-executable.  Great CLI and CALCS info.

RE: “Prettification”

• Rainmeter – x32/x64 bit Windows desktop customization package.  Really amazing stuff.  Spotted via Rainmeter 1.0 Brings the Enigma Desktop to Everyone – Lifehacker post.  My desktops are covered almost full time when I am in front of them so I don’t get as much value out of these as I would wish. Thus give me a nice wallpaper, a good icon-dock (RocketDock), and maybe a larger calendar/task-manager (Rainlendar) and from time-to-time, stickys (PNotes Portable), a non-standard “official” MS theme (XP Embedded Theme – Cool Blue!) and my desktop is good to go on XP. I have found the default themes in Vista/Win7 sufficient, though the apps above come along for the ride.
• Samurize.com – The above statement aside, the only time I really went “wild” trying to trick out my desktop with extra gadgets, I found Samurize to be my preferred desktop gadget-building tool of choice. Of course there are a lot more tools as well. See these older GSD posts: A BIG List of 34 Free XP and Vista Tweaking Apps and 20 Free Ways to Pimp Windows XP if you are curious.

RE: A Hard Drive to Crack

• Tableau Disk Monitor – free with registration – nice tool for providing information on hard-disks. Particularly from a forensics perspective.  Interfaces with supported read-write blocker devices as well (it appears).  I registered and downloaded it.  Requires installation. Has some handy extra features when used in conjunction with a Tableau disk bridge device. For more see these Pocket Hard-Drive Utilities post and more newer finds at this Tweak SharePoint and NAS Links post.
• Atola Insight - ($6990 - $8990) (not free) – I have to confess I wasn’t really sure what to make of this.  From a feature-standpoint it definitely seems to have all the bells-and-whistles for just about any hard-drive servicing needed under the sun including firmware backup/restore and hard-drive password display/recovery/blanking. Atola Technology blog has more information and demos.  Before you run off because of the price, give them credit as they also are the producers of the free/pro versions of Partition Find and Mount — free partition recovery software which is simply an amazing piece of software and something every sysadmin should be familiar with.
• Acronis® True Image Home 2010 Beta II – TinyApps blog recently brought to my attention that Acronis is accepting beta-tester signups for this application.  I’m mostly an ImageX guy for my imaging needs at work, as well as use a basic backup solution that came with my FreeAgent drive, but I must confess I haven’t really deployed an effective data-backup solution at home.  I hope I have some time to kick the tires on this one.
• O&O Software - O&O DiskImage 4 Express – free version for home users – More of a real-time imaging/backup solution than a real-time backup solution.  Nonetheless, it still might provide a certain level of ease-of use and recovery for home users.  Version 4 reports some good feature updates.

RE: Other Stuff

• Java SE 6 Update 16 Is Here – SDN Program News.  Wasn’t auto-picking up on my systems with the Java Control Panel tool.  Manually get the update here..
• ATI/AMD Catalyst 9.7 - first unified Vista and Windows 7 WHQL driver - Aaron Tiensivu’s Blog.  - I’ve been accepting the default drivers for Windows 7/Vista provided by Microsoft Updates.  However if both our systems did continue to have BSOD issues with the video driver (Catalyst…you would know), I might try this fix.  So far only been having them on Vista.  Win7 x64 bits (RC) is rock-solid stable so far
• Recuva – file recovery app – lots of updates of late: View full version change history...
• Paint.NET v3.5 Enhanced for Windows 7 - Windows Experience Blog – I love Paint.NET. Will be designed to use a special Win7 API to enhance some performance and rendering.  You can download an alpha build (build 3509) of Paint.NET v3.5 here.

RE: Browsers

• Namoroka, Portable Edition 3.6 Alpha 1 - PortableApps.com - “Standalone” portable version of the next-gen release of Firefox.  Use this to play with it without installing or changing your current version of Firefox.
• Mozilla Security: Opt-in security with ForceTLS (Firefox add-on introduced) – Donna’s SecurityFlash.  Read carefully to understand the concept and impact of using this. Locking up the valuables: Opt-in security with ForceTLS at Mozilla Security Blog and Force-TLS :: Add-ons for Firefox.  For some reason I want to say I saw some comments that suggested that early adopters found some weird behavior (not malicious but just unexpected) when using this as it seems to be cutting-edge stuff.
• Tab previews in Firefox 3.6. Third time the charm? - Mozilla Links.  Nice but I’d rather have a trim and fast browser in a small footprint.  I’m concerned about built-in bloat in Firefox growing. (As opposed to the bloat I add via my selected/desired Add-ons.)
• Practicing safe surfing can derail attempts to cruise ‘Net anonymously - Network World.  I’m not sure this qualifies as “new” news, but is a good reminder that even anonymous web-browsing isn’t really all that anonymous.  Good read.

RE: A/V Sweetness

• hype-free: Basic multi-media (post)processing.  Great tips from cdman83 on post-processing along with some great freeware/OpenSource tools listed in the post as well as below.  Go read it and get better output.  See also this related “hype-free” post No codec packs please!
• The Levelator – drag-n-drop processor to auto-adjust sound-levels in audio files. Sweet! 
• VLC Media Player Portable – Who needs Windows Media Player? Not Me!.
• The KMPlayer – My personal preference.  Seems to have all the codecs I need to play the audio/visual files I regularly encounter at work and home. Nice interface also.
• ffdshow tryouts -  “ffdshow tryouts is a DirectShow and Video for Windows codec with support for a wide range of audio and video formats, such as Xvid, DivX, and H.264. It includes a powerful filter set that can enhance the video quality - with filters for resizing, deinterlacing, and displaying subtitles - as well as audio quality through normalization, down-/upmixing, and resampling.”  Bleeding edge versions also available that now support x64.

Thanks cdman83!  Great tools all the way round.

Cheers

--Claus V.